


Took Care of the Cat Already

by toomuchplor



Series: Knick Knock [5]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-08
Updated: 2007-11-08
Packaged: 2017-10-20 04:23:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/208688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomuchplor/pseuds/toomuchplor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>As long as John kept his gaze fixed on the mess and away from Ingram's blotchy face, he could maintain the proper indignation.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Took Care of the Cat Already

Looking back, John mostly remembered Ingram's early days on Atlantis in contrast to the way life was now. He vaguely remembered that Ingram had been quiet and solemn and nervous with his small hands, afraid to touch or speak or take what was offered. John remembered the first time he'd closed his hand around Ingram's small rib cage, felt the way his little bones were ridged through too-thin skin, the piteous way Ingram had tried to hold himself back before subsiding into John's warmth. John remembered watching Lorne shout futilely at his own son as the kid tore across the cafeteria, remembered looking down and over at Ingram and wondering how anyone could ever bring themselves to shout at someone so small.

Turned out, there was nothing so easy. John had just needed the right motivation. "I said that you are not allowed to touch my work stuff!" John bellowed, seizing Ingram's sticky-black fingers and attacking them with a wet cloth. "Ingram, I am so angry with you right now."

Ingram burst into startled-scared tears immediately, which in turn immediately made John feel like a world-class shit and threw him back into the sense-memory of Ingram's small body in his arms that first day. "Daddy," Ingram wailed, stretching out the last syllable imploringly.

John kept scrubbing Ingram's hands, well aware that he was being expertly manipulated by the strategic use of the D-word. "No! It was against the rules to touch my stuff and now you broke my pen."

"It was an accident," Ingram protested, sniffling and hiccupping.

"I know," said John, nodding and avoiding those big pitiful blue eyes. "But you knew the rule and you broke it on purpose." As long as John kept his gaze fixed on the mess and away from Ingram's blotchy face, he could maintain the proper indignation; supplies were tighter than ever and it wasn't just that Ingram had to respect others' belongings -- John had _needed_ that pen, just like he needed the last four blocks of legal pads and his carefully hoarded elastic bands. Office supplies weren't as valuable as C4 or antibiotics, but they were far rarer these days, and hence all the more precious.

"I didn't mean to break it," said Ingram, shifting down into remorse.

"I know," John said again, and braved a glance upwards. Ingram's long lashes were stuck into triangle points, beaded with heavy tears, his full red lower lip trembling. John steeled himself for one last fatherly imprecation. "I would like you to apologize."

"I'm sorry," said Ingram in a small, audibly unsorry voice.

John worried his lower lip for a moment, balancing his own need to hug Ingram against Kate's insistence that he not allow Ingram to push him around with his giant toddler brain. The hug won.

"Come here," John said, gruffly, and reached out with one arm to tug Ingram closer, to hold him steady while Ingram caught his breath and eased out of hysteria. "You're a pain," John said, affectionately.

"I'm a pain in your butt," said Ingram, because he was never going to let John forget the time he'd slipped up and said it in front of the kid.

John laughed in spite of himself and squeezed Ingram hard. Ingram had once seemed fragile and delicate, but now John knew him to be solid and resilient and a not-inconsiderable pain in his ass. "Can you please," said John, kissing the hard crown of Ingram's stubborn head, "stop breaking my stuff?"

Ingram considered this. "I will try," he replied. "But sometimes, Daddy, you just _have_ to touch things. Your curious is too noisy and it gets in the way of your remembery for the rules."

And John -- who had once sat down in an Ancient chair in Antarctica because sometimes he just had to touch things, who had become a single parent to a clone in another galaxy in the lost city of Atlantis because he too had a curious that was noisier than his remembery -- John just laughed and nodded his agreement.

**Author's Note:**

> I have been valiantly struggling with the what-comes-next portion of Knick-Knock and finally decided that there is no point in having a kid!verse if you don't use it shamelessly to write shamelessly cute scenes where John is called Daddy. Hence, this. I hope to go back and fill in many of the blanks between Refer to Self and this ficlet. Just maybe not in exactly chronological order.


End file.
